Thee Mighty Caesars: Hail Early Caesars!

Thee Mighty Caesars: Hail Early Caesars!

It’s either utterly ridiculous or a monumental sign post detailing the creativity of humanity that Billy Childish is associated with so many different recordings. Beginning towards the early eighties, Childish and whatever group of bums he could find would crank out some extraordinarily engaging pop induced garage tunes, stick around for a while and then dissolve into the mess of independently released Brit music from the period.

Of course, remaining completely detached from pervasive tastes over there in the UK is pretty impressive when considering the expansive backlog of records Childish has had a hand in. But it’s also kind of nutty that one guy has seen fit to record in roughly the same mode for just about thirty years and folks still eat it up – I’m one of them.

Anyway, after the Milkshakes fell apart, it didn’t take Childish too long to soldered together the group which would constitute Thee Mighty Caesars – and no, I have no idea what all the ‘Thees’ are a bout. Ask Thee Oh Sees, maybe.

During the first two years of the band’s existence it issued some ridiculous number of singles and no less then three albums – or four depending on what dates you dig up from the interwebs and not the dust jackets.

Starting with a self titled disc in 1985, Childish and company presented a then unique take on garage abandon while incorporating a healthful dose of punk’s DIY though process. And coming from an art background, Childish set about adorning each of his albums with unique images and occasionally woodcuts that he produced himself.

Quickly following with Beware The Ides Of March, Thee Mighty Caesars didn’t so much expand or even better define it’s musical approach to recording a nonsensical amount of garage tracks, but the inclusion of covers like “You Can’t Judge a Book By the Cover,” “Rumble” and “Road Runner” all point to a sturdy historical perspective on the genre. That’s not good or bad, it’s just a seems to be a straight line moving through time.

For it’s third album in just over a year, 1986’s Wise Blood, included a cover of Alternative TV’s “Action Time Vision,” which may have to a certain extent repositioned the band and focused it’s punk influence a bit. Of course, bashing out simple songs isn’t the lone provenance of garage or punk. It’s both. And that’s probably all Thee Mighty Caesars needed to point out. They did and kept going for just about another decade.